Monday, January 30, 2012

Justice has prevailed

If any of you have been following the Shafia murder case in Kingston Ontario, you will be pleased to know that all three of these animals have been given life sentences.

The follow excerpts are from the Toronto Star:

"Mohammad Shafia: Guilty on four counts of first-degree murder.

Tooba Mohammad Yahya: Guilty on four counts of first-degree murder.

Hamed Shafia: Guilty on four counts of first degree murder.

And may the devil s—t on their graves.

In our country, men and women are equal. A female’s life is worth as much as a male’s.

In our country, femicide is homicide.

In our country, even the most wicked and palpably culpable of defendants are guaranteed a fair trial, a vigorous defence, which is what these three grotesque individuals got, with all the courtesy and respect court could offer.

And Justice Robert Maranger, who presided over a trial that began last October, clearly concurred with the verdict.

Glaring at the defendants, now the convicted felons, the judge intoned: “It is difficult to conceive of a more despicable, more heinous, more honourless crime".

“There is nothing more honourless than the deliberate murder of, in the case of Mohammad Shafia, three of his daughters and his wife; in the case of Tooba Yahya, three of her daughters and a stepmother to all her children; in the case of Hamed Shafia, three of his sisters and a mother."

“The apparent reason behind these cold-blooded, shameful murders was that the four completely innocent victims offended your twisted concept of honour, a notion of honour that is founded upon the domination and control of women, a sick notion of honour that has absolutely no place in any civilized society".

“For these crimes, for these murders, the sentence is mandatory as set out in the Criminal Code of Canada — imprisonment without eligibility of parole for a period of 25 years — and that’s the sentence of the court for each of you.’’

The Shafia sisters were still in their teens when their lives came to an end in the early morning hours of June 30, 2009. Gorgeous Zainab was 19. Sultry Sahar was 17. Rebellious Geeti was 13. And Rona, sad, doomed, betrayed Rona, Shafia’s first wife in a clandestinely polygamous Afghan marriage, was 52.

Remember them. The jury did.

Before his arrest, patriarch Mohammad Shafia had declared boastfully on the intercepts, oozing self-righteousness: “Even if they hoist me up onto the gallows . . . nothing is more dear to me than my honour.’’